Homosexuality is clearly sin, like adultery, fornications, pride, lying, smuggling cash to south america to avoid taxes/customs, forging signatures, prostitution solicitation, child molestation, child abuse, nepotism, misusing church funds, etc etc.

My beef with CC on this issue is the hypocrisy and in my experience the taboo they’ve made of homosexuality, while tolerating, practicing and enabling the other sins in their Camp.

The Jesus Movement and Calvary Chapel was founded by Lonnie Frisbee, a homosexual, not Chuck Smith. Chuck co-opted Lonnie’s “success” as an evangelist and institutionalized it and capitalized on it. You don’t hear CC embracing and gracing over Lonnie’s homosexuality, but you do see Chuck Smith embracing David Hocking (adulterer) and child abusers like Bob Grenier etc etc etc etc.

Here are 12 signs we have a genuinely repentant heart:

1. We name our sin as sin and do not spin it or excuse it, and further, we demonstrate “godly sorrow,” which is to say, a grief chiefly about the sin itself, not just a grief about being caught or having to deal with the consequences of sin.

2. We actually confessed before we were caught or the circumstantial consequences of our sin caught up with us.

3. If found out, we confess immediately or very soon after and “come clean,” rather than having to have the full truth pulled from us. Real repentance is typically accompanied by transparency.

4. We have a willingness and eagerness to make amends. We will do whatever it takes to make things right and to demonstrate we have changed.

5. We are patient with those we’ve hurt or victimized, spending as much time as is required listening to them without jumping to defend ourselves.

6. We are patient with those we’ve hurt or victimized as they process their hurt, and we don’t pressure them or “guilt” them into forgiving us.

7. We are willing to confess our sin even in the face of serious consequences (including undergoing church discipline, having to go to jail, or having a spouse leave us).

8. We may grieve the consequences of our sin but we do not bristle under them or resent them. We understand that sometimes our sin causes great damage to others that is not healed in the short term (or perhaps ever).

9. If our sin involves addiction or a pattern of behavior, we do not neglect to seek help with a counselor, a solid twelve-step program, or even a rehabilitation center.

10. We don’t resent accountability, pastoral rebuke, or church discipline.

11. We seek our comfort in the grace of God in Jesus Christ, not simply in being free of the consequences of our sin.

12. We are humble and teachable.
As it is, I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting. For you felt a godly grief, so that you suffered no loss through us. For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death. For see what earnestness this godly grief has produced in you, but also what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what punishment! At every point you have proved yourselves innocent in the matter.
– 2 Corinthians 7:9-11

Calvary Chapel Castle Rock, Colorado
Previously run by Pastor Brian Abeyta
The new church leaders recently made public what their independent auditors uncovered for 2011:

Former Pastor Brian Abeyta systematically took $200K out of the church money in 2011.
Abeyta ran up the church’s credit card $60K in 2011.
Only 2011 was audited.

3 women came forward revealing that Abeyta was in a relationship with each of them at the same time.

Abeyta stood before the church and admitted to having an “emotional affair” with one woman.
Abeyta stood before the church and admitted his “spending had gotten out of control.”
Abeyta did not disclose and come clean on all the sin that was uncovered later.

When Abeyta was faced with his financial sins, he blamed the Assistant Pastor of stealing.
The Assistant Pastor was exonerated.

When Abeyta was faced with his moral failure, he accused his wife of having an affair with the worship leader.
Both the pastor’s wife and the worship leader were exonerated.
Abeyta has spoken with others saying he is “protecting his wife,” thereby continuing to implicate her as being guilty of moral failure.

Abeyta operated the church without a board for 3 years.
Abeyta had no oversight. No one had the power to hold him accountable for decisions, spiritually abusive attitudes and actions, along with finances that were not transparent.

“…If Bob’s evils are “beyond the statute of limitations”, how were so many grown-up altar boys’ testimonies used to oust the pedophile priests?…”

I think part of the answer is in the semi-submerged anti-Catholic bigotry that still swims about in some Protestant circles. It wasn’t too long ago that the bigots feared a Catholic President as much as they feared the Red-threat.

Maybe this will help others. Taken from Alex’s main entry.

“The Bible term en sarki in flesh (2 Tim. 3:16) and became flesh (Jn 1:14), means Jesus is of a complete human nature, 100% humanity. 1 Jn.1:1-4. 1 John 4:2 says, “that every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God.” John is writing AFTER THE RESURRECTION, he uses the PERFECT TENSE in the Greek language that DENOTES A PAST ACTION with continuing results into the future.” (emp. mine)

Now I will share what I was reading from page 20-21 that caused me to pause read and re-read then come here.

“yea though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more.” This is confessedly a difficult passage and it lends itself to a variety of interpretations.

Some take “flesh” here to be literal and use this verse to suggest that at some time after His resurrection (indeed after the events of Luke 24:39 where we read:”Handle me and see for a spirit doesn’t have flesh and bones as you see me having!”) Christ removed himself from his human body of flesh. Thus He was once known as a man in the flesh, but is no longer associated with a body, with flesh. This leads to the separation of the Christ from the human Jesus.

Let us be reminded that the word “Christ” is a word “carried over” (transliterated, not translated) from Greek to English. That is, the Greek word is simply spelled with English letters. “Messiah” is a word similarly transliterated from Hebrew to English. Both would be translated as “anointed” or “The Anointed One”. Thus “Messiah” and “Christ” are equivalent.

According to the view above, Christ now exists as a spirit-being apart from human substance. What became of the flesh, the man Jesus, must remain a mystery. It seems that any separation of Jesus and Messiah (Christ) and flesh is dealt with most seriously by John in 1 John 4:1-6.

2 By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3 and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.

The context makes it plain that the full acknowledgement or “confession” of Jesus (v3) is that He Is Messiah (Christ) and in the flesh. V2 can be translated as “has come” or “is come in the flesh”. The perfect tense is used in the Greek. It’s significance lies in presenting action as having reached its termination and existing in its finished results. [see Dana and Mantey, a Manual Grammar of the Greek New Testament (The Macmillan Co. New York, 1948) pg. 201]

The implication appears to be that Jesus Christ not only came in the flesh but continues to exist substantially in the flesh. There can be no separation between Christ, Jesus, and human substance. To make a separation is, to John the spirit of antichrist.

A further counter argument is that if Paul were referring to Christ as no longer having a literal flesh, he would not have used the phrase “according to flesh” (“kata sarka”) This phrase is never used to refer ton literal flesh, but to external features of life as indicated earlier. If Paul meant to state that Christ is no longer to be known in literal flesh, he would have used the phrase “in the flesh” as in Gal. 2:20: “the life which I now live in the flesh” (“en sarki”).